In a Scottish government consultation paper published on Wednesday, the leader of the Scottish National Party said the 2014 referendum would ask Scotland's 4 million voters: “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”
Mr Salmond's plan for the independence vote set the stage for what some in Britain have described as a high-stakes constitutional poker game pitting Mr Salmond against the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, with the prize the right to dismantle, or preserve, Britain's existence as a united country.
Mr Cameron has insisted that only parliament in London has the legal power to approve a referendum on the potential breakup of the union between England and Scotland, which was forged in the Act of Union of 1707. He has also said London, not Edinburgh, should set the terms and timing of the vote.
Mr Salmond has rejected those positions and on Wednesday he threw down the gauntlet. Outlining his own terms for the ballot, he set a May deadline for the conclusion of a public consultation['] on its terms and suggested that Mr Cameron would have little choice in the end but to bow to whatever format Mr Salmond's government adopted. » | John Burns, Alan Cowell | Friday, January 27, 2012
